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Spitsbergen's coastline needs cleanup — Arcticugol's CEO

The archipelago's coastline is polluted with waste from various industries

MOSCOW, May 20. /TASS/. The Spitsbergen Archipelago's coastline needs to be cleaned, Director General of the Arcticugol state-run company Ildar Neverov said.

"This year, the movement [the Clean Arctic Project] focuses on the Spitsbergen Archipelago. There's work to be done there," he told a TASS news conference, devoted to the Clean Arctic Project's sixth season, dedicated to the Year of Unity of the Peoples of Russia.

The archipelago's coastline is polluted with waste from various industries, he continued. "From the intensive industrial development of the archipelago, especially during the Soviet period, there have been quite big amounts of accumulated environmental damage."

"The pollution is metal waste, heating mains in wooden boxes, cable products - the coastline needs to be cleaned. The Arkticugol Trust Company has been doing it all this as part of its corporate volunteer movement," he added.

Clean Arctic is a large-scale project to clean up the Arctic from waste accumulated there since Soviet times. Captain of the 50 Let Pobedy nuclear-powered Arctic-class icebreaker Dmitry Lobusov, and Gennady Antokhin, Captain on FESCO’s ships from 1982 to 2012, are the project’s authors. Clean Arctic has become a platform that unites public and volunteer organizations, scientists, governors and businesses. The project's partners are Norilsk Nickel, Rosatom, PhosAgro, and Russian Railways.

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